


Valkyrie Connect - Ragnarok-hen

by LadyStardust97



Series: Valkyrie Connect [1]
Category: Valkyrie Connect (Video Game)
Genre: Mostly Canon Compliant, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, its isekai basically
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-05-17 07:32:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14828081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyStardust97/pseuds/LadyStardust97
Summary: Lorna Davis, a completely average college student struggling to fit in, suddenly finds her world turned upside down when she is magically transported to the world of her favorite phone game, Valkyrie Connect.As the hero chosen by the rune knife, and with deep knowledge of the game's lore, she finds herself confronted with the realities of interfering in a war between gods.





	1. Choosing / Chosen

**Author's Note:**

> yes this is isekai but also? i dont give a fuck im writing my self-indulgent hell fic

It was an ordinary day.

  
Nothing out of the normal.

  
Lorna had gotten up, gotten dressed, and attended her morning classes. No one paid much attention to her, and she felt herself drifting off as she scribbled down notes in Algebra III. She would have a decent amount of time to break for lunch, and there was a promotion in the mobile game she was playing- she was honestly just waiting for her class to end so she could start working on it.

  
She didn't really have family, and the most she could say about that was that she had at least netted some nice scholarships for it. She was alright with that.

  
She didn't really have friends, and the most she could say about that was that she singlehandedly carried her guild in the mobile game. She was alright with that.

  
She had excelled in school, but no matter how hard she tried, she never really got any praise for that, much less anybody noticing her.

  
Sometimes, she looked up at the sky (bright blue in the day, glowing orange and pink at sunset, a speckled navy at night) and wondered if the world would miss her if she was gone.

  
Her phone pinged. It was Valkyrie Connect- the game she had been playing. Admittedly, obsessively, for a few months. She had gotten pretty high up in the rankings. The game was alerting her to the fact that it was time for her to collect her daily stamina.  
 _That means I have fifteen minutes left in class_ , she thought to herself. The professor was still lecturing, somehow. Something about synthetic division.

  
Her phone went off again- another notification? So soon? It wasn't like anybody real ever texted her. Two or three people actually sort of glanced over, and she hunched over her paper, scribbling down notes and trying to keep her face down. The scribbles turned into a sketch of one of the game's main characters, a valkyrie named Skuld. She wasn't very good in the PVP arena play, but Lorna liked her as a character. She was sort of like the opposite of Lorna- sort of almost like the kind of girl Lorna wished she could be.

  
Skuld was thin and pretty and blonde and didn't have to worry about how much she ate. Skuld was outgoing and energetic and made friends with everyone she met. Skuld had an absolute, unwavering faith in the player character, that was sometimes even corny.

  
...

  
The class ended.

  
Lorna took a shortcut to the campus cafeteria, an overgrown dirt path that went through the biology department's nature reserve. She liked it because it was quiet and overgrown, and birds sang there all day long. Plus, no one else was ever there, so she could check her phone without feeling embarrassed about playing an anime RPG.

  
She opened up the game, and, since it was such a nice day out, watched the opening cinematic instead of tapping through it (which she normally did when she was busy).

She wasn't really watching where she was going, and, suddenly, tripped over a tree root.

  
_Why is taking me so long to fall?_ She wondered, as her phone fell out of her hands. She could see that the opening cinematic had paused, and a text box was covering it-

  
You've been chosen!

  
You've been chosen!

  
You've been chosen!

  
Suddenly the air was choked with smoke, and she could hear people yelling. She slammed down onto a cobblestone path and her glasses fell off of her face with the same amount of force, shattering. There were people running by her in throngs, dressed in weird clothes, and up ahead she could see a glowing blue light, like, like-

  
" Skuld?"

  
She barely managed to whisper it, in disbelief, and then Skuld turned around to look at her, distracted from her fight- the fight with Hel, the one in the opening cutscene!

Then where was the runestone dagger? It was supposed to be with Skuld.

  
It didn't take long for the answer to that to appear.

  
Lorna had just barely managed to stand up, her knees and elbows aching with pain from the fall, when there was something she could only describe as a sonic boom from the clouds above. A bright blue sigil lit up beneath her feet, and then the dagger fell, with the same blue energy streaming off of it, from some indeterminate place in the heavens. It made a weird sound, like a waterfall, and then buried itself in the cobblestone directly in front of Lorna's feet.

  
And she felt frozen.

  
She couldn't move.

  
" The dagger!" Skuld yelled, and then a wave of liquid darkness hit her square in the chest and she fell, feathers fluttering, out of Lorna's sight.

  
Right. The dagger.

  
Lorna fell back down on her knees, and grabbed the hilt of the dagger, trying to pull it from the ground. It was much, much harder to pull out than she thought it would be, and all the cool designer flairs on the handle were cutting into her palm every time it slipped from the actual grip.

  
Was this a dream?

  
Had she hit her head when she fell?

  
No.

  
The pain of the metal cutting into her hand, the yelling of the townsfolk around her, the eerie howling of Fenrir in the distance-

  
All of those things were real.

  
And it hurt, but she screamed as she yanked the the dagger out of the ground and held it up-

  
A thin blue beam, like a laser, shot out of the tip of it, and then arced back down, to roughly where Skuld had fallen. Everything hurt like hell, but Lorna picked herself back up and started running towards that point.

  
There was so much going on it was unreal, and she couldn't process it, and she could feel her chest heaving from the effort it took to run, because she hadn't ever been much for athletics.

  
Somehow, she felt alive.

  
There were fewer people now, just broken down carts and houses with their doors swinging open. Fires blazing, presumably cast off from the fight. She could see Skuld on the ground in front of her, the blue light from the dagger lightly enveloping her prone form. Hel was still floating magically, but seemed to be starting to go down towards Skuld.

  
Hel!

  
Hel was being manipulated! She hadn't known that it was a set-up to make her attack Midgard! After Lorna saved Skuld, she'd have to save Hel, too...

  
Focus, focus, focus, she had to focus on whether she could save Skuld or not.   
God, what could she do?

  
She was out of shape, to put it kindly, had no experience with anything in this realm beyond what she had seen while playing a video game, and the idea of actual combat terrified her.

  
You've been chosen!

  
That was what the little box on her phone had said.

  
God, she hoped it was right. God, she hoped it was right. That she was someone who was worth choosing.

  
She was only a few feet away from Skuld now- any moment-

  
She threw herself over to Skuld, skidding on her knees (it seriously hurt, something was definitely busted there-) and putting her arms around Skuld's waist. She tried to stand, to help Skuld stand, but Skuld was so heavy, and it was so awkward trying to hold Skuld and a knife and deal with the fact that Hel was definitely giving her a death look, descending from the sky.

  
" Skuld! Please, please wake up, please..." Lorna begged, jostling Skuld's shoulders, to no avail.

  
" Is that really the rune dagger? Sort of pathetic, that it chose a mere human as its master," Hel sneered. She was taller than Lorna would've thought, and she had magic flowing off of her in wisps. She was scary.

Lorna had gotten so used to just seeing the art of her in the game, she had forgotten that Hel was a goddess of the dead, that Hel was scary.

  
" You don't have to do this, Hel," she said, swallowing and raising her head to stare Hel directly in the eyes. It was terrifying. She could feel herself shaking. She could see that Hel had more resolve in her eyes than she herself could ever dream of having.

  
But Hel paused.

  
" How did you know my name-?" she asked, brow wrinkling up with confusion. Lorna couldn't think of anything else to do, so she just started talking, as much as she could, about what she could remember from the game's plot.

  
" Hel, you're being manipulated into thinking that the humans from Midgard- from Nordicia- are poisoning and destroying your realm. But they're not! It's not them- it's being polluted by, um, by, I think- by Nidhogg! There's no reason for you to be fighting here! There's no reason for you to be fighting Skuld! So please, stop! Please stop!"  
Her throat felt hoarse. She had been yelling so much in the past five minutes (had it really only been that long-?), yelling more than she ever had in the past two or three years.

  
Hel was just floating there, staring at her.

Lorna hadn't ever held eye contact with someone for so long, and yet she knew she could not break it.

  
Her feet touched the ground.

  
Suddenly, Skuld stood upright (almost upright- her leg looked hurt-) and pushed Lorna away; Lorna stumbled and fell, still firmly gripping the rune dagger. She slung her sword around (her sword looked so much bigger in person!) and pointed it at Hel.

" Don't hurt any-"

  
Hel interrupted her.

  
" I wasn't going to. I was going to listen," she snapped, still clearly on edge. Skuld looked taken off-guard by that, lowering her sword. She looked back behind her, at Lorna.

  
Lorna realized she was sitting on the ground, still, and scrambled to stand up because oh Lord Skuld and Hel, Skuld and Hel, Skuld and Hel were both looking at her. She would've never dreamt of it in a thousand years. If she knew that this was going to happen, she would've at least wanted to wear nicer clothes- what was she thinking, this was a life or death situation.

  
Hel held up a hand and let magic ooze out of it.

  
" How do you know all of that about Nidhogg? What proof do I have that you're not lying so you can save yourself, mortal?" She asked. Lorna smiled as gamely as she could, and could feel a stammer coming on. She couldn't exactly actually tell Hel the truth- that she knew that because it was the plot of a video game on her smart phone. Oh fuck. Where was her phone? She still had her totebag, with all of her assorted college stuff inside, but where was her phone?

  
Not important, not important.

  
She needed to concentrate on de-escalating the situation with Hel and Skuld.

  
She stood up as straight as she could.  
" I-I'm the hero chosen by the runestones, aren't I? I, I didn't only get the dagger. I know about a lot of stuff that's going on, too. Stuff in the future, and the past, and about the Aesir and Jotun, and about Midgard and Helheim and Asgard. And I'm here to help. Help stop Ragnarok," she said, talking as fast as she could to get it all out. She almost felt like she had said too much. Had she? Would they think she was lying because she had said too much?

  
Skuld looked extremely surprised, though Hel still seemed skeptical.

  
" T-that's all I can tell you for now! I can't tell you anything else," she tacked on. " I can- I can take you to where Nidhogg is-"

  
Suddenly Fenrir roared and Lorna remembered that there was a gigantic, violent dog rampaging through the city.

  
" Mortal, move-!"

  
Lorna felt someone crash into her, and suddenly Hel was laying on top of her. Her back hurt just as bad as her legs did, and she could see over Hel's shoulder that Fenrir had lunged forward, and that Skuld was blocking him with her sword.

  
Hel looked over to Skuld too, and yelled.

  
" Are you alright, Valkyrie Skuld?!"

  
Skuld nodded, but Lorna could see her straining from the effort.

  
" Can't you call him off, Hel? You brought him here!"

  
Hel sat up and stood, reaching out her hand to help Lorna stand, as she spoke.

  
" I can't now, he's too far gone- we're going to have to beat the energy out of him!- Mortal, hurry up and stand, you can't just sit there in a daze." Halfway through speaking, she suddenly turned and addressed Lorna, and Lorna realized that she had been laying on the ground, feeling frozen.

Hel.

  
Hel's hand.

  
Lorna reached up and set her hand in Hel's- and it was soft.

  
Yet Hel had so much power when she yanked Lorna to her feet.

  
" How much combat experience do you have?" she asked, face very, very serious. Lorna tried not to die inside as she replied.

Hel was going to think she was incompetent.

Hel was going to think she was a burden.

  
" N-none," she half-mumbled, looking away. She hoped she wasn't blushing. She really hoped she wasn't blushing. Hel sighed.

  
" Do you know any magic, at least?"

  
Lorna tried not to bite her lip out of anxiety when she shook her head no. Hel seemed annoyed by it, but didn't say anything.

  
" U-um-! Actually, maybe- earlier, the dagger sort of, when I held it- it enveloped Skuld in this blue light, and after that faded away, she stood back up-"

  
Hel nodded, stepping away from Lorna and back towards Fenrir and Skuld, locked in a stalemate.

  
" I can work with that. I can at least hope that your dagger light heals me," she said, not facing Lorna as she walked towards the fight.

  
_She looks so cool_ , Lorna thought. _Her and Skuld... Look so cool, together. All I'm doing... is standing here._

  
" Fenrir, you're being a bad dog!" Hel yelled, and hurled a burst of magic at Fenrir's snout as he lunged forward at Skuld again. This distracted him, and he whipped around to face Hel, snarling. He started to go forward to bite at Hel, but then Skuld came forward and swung her sword, burying it in Fenrir's fur. Green and gold light streamed off of the wound, probably more than there was blood-  
There was blood, and magic, and Lorna was watching two young women (well, not really young, but they looked her age-) fight a gigantic magical dog beast in the middle of a city that was on fire. If it wasn't for the urgency and immediacy of the situation, she realized that she probably would've shut down completely. She wasn't a combat person. She wasn't a magic person. She was barely even a person. No one knew about her and no one cared about her and-

  
Hel suddenly cried out and was flung, incredibly fast, crashing into the building next to Lorna and leaving a dent in the plaster.

  
She pried herself out of the wall, and she was smiling a little bit, actually. She was smiling.

  
The dagger in Lorna's hand started glowing again, and she felt herself mentally jumping back into reality. She pointed it to Hel just as the blue light arced out of it, and the glow enveloped the bluehaired woman as she readied herself to get back into the fight.

  
" A-am I doing alright, Hel?" Lorna yelled over to her, and Hel nodded, wordless, and then launched herself back into the fray with lightning speed. She somehow looked even stronger than she had before.

  
Lorna couldn't find it in herself to describe the way the fight looked. It was dazzling. It was bright, flashy colors streaming like both fire and water, feathers flying everywhere and the song of Hel and Skuld yelling phrases at each other that Lorna couldn't understand, mixed with Fenrir's animalistic snarls, growls, and barking.

  
Which were growing weaker.

  
Suddenly, Fenrir collapsed, still breathing, but obviously down for the count. It seemed to have been the result of blood loss from Skuld's attacks, if Lorna had to guess. She knew about those sorts of things from television shows.

  
Hel descended to the ground, and snapped her fingers. The wraith-like figures of skeletons suddenly formed from the ground, like mist turned corporeal.

  
" Take him back to Helheim," she ordered, and they all nodded slowly, in unison, picking the large dog up as though he was weightless. As they began to walk away, Hel turned to Lorna.

  
" Good work staying out of the way," she said shortly.

  
Skuld rolled her eyes and slung her sword back into the sheath on her back.

  
" She was helpful! She kept us from fighting each other, and then she healed both of us up!" she said, in a cheerfully pouty way. With a flap of her wings, she lightly touched down on the ground and skipped over to Lorna. " And it's good that she didn't get hurt!"  
She was smiling, really wide and really sincerely. Lorna smiled back, feeling like a complete nervous wreck, because wow, Skuld was really, really pretty in real life. Who knew. Wait. Could this be called real life?

  
" I, I'm glad that I could be of use," She said softly. Suddenly Skuld hugged her, very hard.

  
" Don't sound so shy like that! You're the hero chosen by the runestones, remember? You have to have more confidence!"

  
Suddenly Hel waved her hand in front of Skuld's face.

  
" Skuld, you're going to suffocate her. Humans break very easily," she said. " Besides. She still has to take us to Nidhogg, so I can stop him from poisoning Helheim. If what she said is true."

  
Skuld leaned away from Lorna, though she was still hugging her.

  
" Oh please, don't doubt the legendary hero! She wouldn't lie to us!" She protested. " Even if she is a shrinking violet."

  
Hel was already beginning to walk away, presumably back out of the town the way she came.

  
" You trust people too easily, Skuld," she said shortly. " Maybe I've trusted too easily today too, though..."

  
She set a hand to her forehead.

  
" We need to go find Nidhogg now. I can't stand the thought of my Helheim being poisoned like this..." She shivered.

  
" And you're not even going to-"

  
Lorna interrupted Skuld, her voice much softer.

  
" But Hel, right after we do that, we have to come back here. You need to apologize to the people here, and help fix their homes," she said, though she knew her voice lacked conviction. And indeed, Hel looked over to Skuld instead of directly at Lorna.

  
" Does that seem fair to you, Skuld?" she asked, and seemed only a bit annoyed when Skuld agreed.

  
Suddenly Skuld moved away, to follow Hel, and Lorna realized that Skuld had been hugging her for the course of the entire conversation, until that moment.

  
" Well, if that's what-"

  
She paused for a minute, then turned to Lorna.

  
" I never asked your name, did I?" she asked, seemingly surprised by herself.

  
" Oh. It's Lorna. Lorna Davis," Lorna replied. " I'm... I'm really glad that I was able to finally meet you two."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gals take a walk through the swamp to see Nidhogg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear ive had this written ive just been really busy

" Are you sure you know where you're going?" Hel asked, her voice vaguely snobby in an inoffensive way- it was funny, that a goddess could sound so much like a spoiled kid off of TV. 

Lorna, distracted by the question, almost tripped over an exposed tree root, but Skuld caught her arm.

" Ooopsy-daisy!" Skuld exclaimed, talking to no one in particular. " Geez, Lorna, you really are clumsy! Clumsier than me, somehow."

Lorna found herself blushing as she apologized.

" Ah, well, I'm not really used to walking on paths like this... As a matter of fact, I tripped and fell on a root right before I met you two..." She omitted the part about seemingly crossing between universes or dimensions. " Oh! And Hel! I don't know the exact direction, walking, but I know where he's at- he's at the base of Yggdrasil, poisoning all the rivers he can, while eating the tree's roots..."

They were walking on a thin dirt path winding through a swamp. It was about half a day's walk from the town they had been at. Though Lorna had slept a little the night before- without a blanket, using her college totebag as a pillow- she was honestly on the verge of passing out from exhaustion. She didn't want to show it, since Hel and Skuld didn't seem tired at all, and Lorna had the creeping suspicion that they were taking it slow for her sake. 

It felt awful. It felt like she was being a burden. It didn't feel like how she thought it would at all. Being a legendary hero and all. 

But she wasn't bitter about it, she just felt really, really pressured to perform well because Hel and Skuld and Hel and Skuld and they were real.

" Ehhh?! He's really out there doing that?? Do you think that that's what's going to cause Ragnarok?" Skuld asked, eyes wide. Lorna would've laughed if she wasn't still in shock from being thrown into an alternate universe. 

" Skuld, Nidhogg is an annoyance at best. He's very powerful, and very mean, but he isn't powerful enough or mean enough to cause Ragnarok. He probably just wants it to happen," Hel explained, exasperated. " Have you ever had a single complex thought in your life?"

Skuld immediately became defensive, walking along the thin path as Hel hovered slightly ahead of her and Lorna. 

" I am complex! I can think! I was just thinking that since Lorna knew it it might be connected to Ragnarok. I was, after all, assigned the duty of preventing Ragnarok by Odin! I have to consider every possibility when we're talking about how it might happen!" She protested. 

Lorna stopped in her tracks.

Right. Odin.

I can't tell them right now, she thought to herself. It would crush Skuld.

" Is something wrong, Lorna? Did you realize that Skuld is perhaps underqualified?" Hel called back. Lorna shook her head.

" No, no, I'm just- tired. Where I come from, I don't really get out and take long walks like this," she proffered. Hel and Skuld seemed to accept this answer; Lorna supposed that being useless had its useful times. 

" Well, don't worry! We've only got like three or four hours left, if we hurry!" Skuld reassured her. Her hand rested on Lorna's shoulder (Lorna was beginning to think that Skuld was a very tactile person). " And then we can rest underneath Yggdrasil before we come back to help fix up the town. You'll feel super refreshed then, I promise!" 

She was so confident, it was amazing. Lorna hadn't realized that it was possible to be so confident. But then again, she had also always been... hesitant.

" Love how you're assuming everything will be all sunshine and roses," Hel said. " Right after saying it might be Ragnarok, too."

Skuld laughed, her voice like a ringing bell.

" Don't be so down about everything, Hel! It'll all turn out alright!" 

Lorna found herself... believing her.

She wasn't a fictional character anymore, she was a real person, in front of her- breathing, laughing, with huge feathery wings and clear green eyes and an unfaltering smile. Skuld seemed like she was the real hero. 

The swamp they were walking in- well, a bit above, really- was peaceful. It wasn't like how Lorna had always seen swamps depicted in the media around her- there were birds singing, frogs croaking, the water was placid and everything was stained a beautiful, vibrant green. Everything in Nordicia so far had looked really pretty, actually. Lorna's college campus had been beautiful, yes- but nothing, nothing like this. It all looked like a fairytale. No wonder everyone fought so hard to defend it...

They had been going along for a while, mostly quiet, when Skuld spoke up again.

" You know, Lorna... You're not from around here, are you?" she asked. " You dress strangely and you don't know any magic or fighting skills. Also, the stuff in your little bag is so weird! You have a little clicky thing in there that looks Dwarven but it's not, and-"

" Y-you looked in my bag?!" Lorna asked, feeling panicky. The doodle of Skuld she had made in her math class the day before was still in there- had it really only been a single day? 

" I didn't look at your little notebooks! I just wanted to see what was in the bag," she said. " I thought that maybe you might like..." She made some vague gestures. " Have secret hero stuff in there."

Lorna laughed a little. She was still feeling highstrung, but then also, how could she not laugh at Skuld's vague notion? It was actually like... really cute. 

" If I could've prepared for coming here, I would have," she assured Skuld. It felt like the loudest her voice had ever gotten- well, not loud, but a normal volume. She normally kept so quiet. Even when she had been panicking earlier, she had kept her voice low. 

Skuld tilted her head, thinking on that, as they walked behind Hel, who was so far ahead that she seemed almost out of sight. Suddenly Hel stopped and looked back.

" Skuld, could you fly up above the treetops and see how far we have to go? I'm running low on magic right now, and I just got a weird feeling about the path ahead," she said. And it did seem like she was running low, or at least was trying to reserve as much as she could for their confrontation with Nidhogg- she was walking instead of floating, as she had been earlier. Skuld nodded. She jumped up and burst into flight in a spiralling motion, smoothly dodging every branch in her way; the gust of wind from her jump practically knocked Lorna off of her feet.

" She's so enthusiastic about everything," Hel said, projecting so that Lorna could hear her. It was sort of funny to see her standing in the wilderness, proud and looking decidedly unnatural, with her bright blue hair and spiky accessories. 

" It's nice," Lorna replied, feeling silly because she had to raise her voice. But it was nice. She liked having someone so positive around, even if they had spent most of their time together since their initial meeting just walking. Skuld was definitely intimidating, but then at the same time, she was so openly social that it was sometimes hard to be shy or hesitant around her. 

Skuld flew back down, firmly in the middle of the path between Hel and Lorna. 

" We're about an hour and a half away! It looks a little weird up ahead though- do you think that Nidhogg is poisoning this realm, too?"

Lorna walked up ahead, to Skuld, and said something she had realized a moment ago.

" The birds aren't singing anymore."

Skuld looked over at her, confused, but Hel seemed to understand. 

" You're sharper than I had you pegged for," she said, and Lorna could tell that she had shifted her tone of voice, now audibly on guard. " The bird cries have been petering out for the past hour, and we've finally gotten to an area that's completely quiet. Even before Skuld went up, there wasn't a single animal making noise."

Skuld suddenly seemed to realize what Hel was saying; that they were entering an area that was either poisoned, or had unknown hostile elements lurking within. 

" Alright! So, I'll stick close by with Lorna, then?" she said, grinning and leaning on Lorna's shoulder. That was another thing that surprised Lorna. Skuld was tall. She hadn't really had time to appreciate it, since Skuld spent so much time in the air or running around, but she had to stand at least five foot eleven; she was several inches taller than Lorna, at any rate. 

Hel sighed.

" Normally, I would say that you should be scouting up ahead, but we have to keep Lorna safe, yes. If the swamp is getting poisoned, it might hurt her because she's human, and if there's trouble up ahead, she might be targeted because she has the runestone dagger," she conceded. It hadn't occurred to Lorna that she might be targeted for having the runestone dagger- that added another level of unease to their journey. She couldn't wait to have some time to rest.

As they walked, the vivid emerald of the vegetation around them was seeming to lose its intensity, wilting more and more. Lorna just really hoped that it wouldn't start to affect her; she didn't want to be more of a burden than she already was. 

They could've been there already if I had just stayed behind, she thought to herself, feeling bitter. Even when I'm a hero, I end up getting in the way...

" You know, you didn't answer me earlier," Skuld mentioned, leaning over as she walked to look more closely at Lorna. " You're not from here, right? I don't think that you're from any place I've ever been to in Midgard..."

" Really?" Lorna asked. " Do I stick out that much?" 

She picked at the collar of her thin turtleneck sweater, and then looked down at her jeans. Her clothes were still pretty messed up from the situation the day before, with the knee of her left pants leg ripped open. She had lace-up boots from a military surplus store, at least, and she had been extremely grateful for them during the walk. But yeah, she probably did stick out, now that she was thinking about it...

" Of course you do," Hel said, her voice ringing back through the trees. " A woman your age that doesn't know how to fight or cast magic? That's one of the strangest things I've ever heard. And your clothes are made of some weird fake fabric- it reminds me of that scratchy Dwarven machined cotton."

“ Ah, I guess you have a good point…” Lorna conceded. There were an awful lot of female heroes in the game, so maybe it was less a fan service thing and more of a cultural deal? That women fought? The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. 

… On the basis that the game was some weird portal to an alternate dimension where all the characters were real, of course. 

Which it was.

It made her feel a little silly, actually.

“ So, where are you from?” Hel asked, cutting straight to the point. That was very typical of her personality- acerbic and shrewd. Still endearing though. Lorna smiled, tried to come up with a suitable answer for a moment, and found that she couldn’t really think of one. She could just say, oh, I tumbled into your realm from another universe where no one cared about me, but like… She felt like even if it was the truth, it was a bit outrageous, disingenuous, and so on and so forth. 

" Um. Well. I don't think either of you have ever heard of it... I'm from a state called Maine, but I'm going to college in Tennessee..." She said. Hopefully that was a good enough answer that they wouldn't ask any specific details. Skuld assumed a thinking pose as she walked, as though she was trying to wrack her brain for where Maine and Tennessee could possibly be in Midgard.  
" College? But you don't know any magic or combat skills," Hel observed flatly, eyebrow raised as though it was preposterous. 

" I'm an English Literature major," Lorna supplied. " I really just spend most of my time writing." She didn't feel like explaining to Hel and Skuld that magic didn't exist on Earth, and that most people didn't actively participate in stuff like battles and war. Well, there was war. It was fought very differently, though, and not in the place where she lived, so she didn't think of it often. Didn't like to think of it. Didn't agree with the reasons it got fought.

Well.

She was going to be fighting in Ragnarok now, and come to think of it-

She wasn't sure if she agreed with the reason for that, either.


End file.
